2020 Scissortail Biographies

Jeffrey Alfier’s most recent book is Gone This Long: Southern Poems (Main Street Rag Publishing Company, 2019). The Shadow Field, a collection of fresh poems set overseas, is forthcoming from Louisiana Literature Press (January, 2020). The Wolf Yearling, (Silver Birch, 2013), Idyll for a Vanishing River (Glass Lyre, 2013), and Fugue for a Desert Mountain (Flutter Press, 2017) are collections of poems set in the American Southwest. In 2016, Cowboy Buddha Publishing published Anthem for Pacific Avenue, a collection of California poems, and Aldrich Press came out with The Red Stag at Carrbridge: Scotland Poems. His journal publication credits include The Carolina Quarterly, Chiron Review, Copper Nickel, Midwest Quarterly, Permafrost, Red Earth Review, Southern Poetry Review, and Texas Review. He is founder and co-editor of Blue Horse Press and San Pedro River Review.

Dorothy Alexander is a poet, memoirist, storyteller, author of four poetry collections, two multi-genre memoirs, and two volumes of oral history. Her work has appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including Malpais Review; Sugar Mule Literary Review; Blood & Thunder: Musings on the Art of Medicine; Oklahoma Humanities Journal; Missing Persons, (Beatlick Press of Albuquerque); Weaving the Terrain (Dos Gatos Press of ABQ). She curated poetry readings at the annual Woody Guthrie Folk Festival in Oklahoma for 15 years, and is a recipient of the Carlile Award for Distinguished Service to the Oklahoma literary community. She currently curates a monthly poetry reading at the Santa Fe Convention Center under the auspices of the City of Santa Fe NM and its Bureau of Tourism and is co-owner with Devey Napier of Village Books Press, Cheyenne OK, and Santa Fe NM. In another life, Dorothy was a lawyer and municipal judge for 45 years.

Rilla Askew is the author of four novels, a book of stories, and a collection of creative nonfiction, Most American: Notes from a Wounded Place. She’s a PEN/Faulkner finalist, recipient of the Western Heritage Award, Oklahoma Book Award, and a 2009 Arts and Letters Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Askew’s essays, poems, and short fiction have appeared in Tin House, Fish Drum, Nimrod, AGNI, Green Country: Writing from Northeastern Oklahoma, and elsewhere. She teaches creative writing at the University of Oklahoma.

Amanda Bales hails from Oklahoma. Since leaving, she has lived in various places, including four years in a dry cabin in Fairbanks, Alaska, where she completed her M.F.A. in Creative Writing. Her work has appeared in Southern Humanities Review, Cincinnati Review, New South, and elsewhere. She is currently a Lecturer in Rhetoric and Creative Writing at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Walter Bargen has published 23 books of poetry.  Recent books include:  Days Like This Are Necessary: New & Selected Poems (BkMk Press, 2009), Trouble Behind Glass Doors (BkMk Press, 2013), Perishable Kingdoms (Grito del Lobo Press, 2017), Too Quick for the Living (Moon City Press, 2017), My Other Mother’s Red Mercedes (Lamar University Press, 2018), and Until Next Time (Singing Bone Press, 2019). His awards include: a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, Chester H. Jones Foundation Award, and the William Rockhill Nelson Award.  He was appointed the first poet laureate of Missouri (2008-2009). 

Alan Berecka is appearing at Scissortail for the 14^th time. He comes mainly to add to his extensive collection of ECU parking passes which he plans to sell on ebay sometime soon to aid in financing his retirement. He works as a librarian at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi. He is currently working on his fifth collection of poems which consists of poems about work. These poems have appeared in the Concho River Review, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry, and the Windward Review. In 2017 he was named the first poet laureate of Corpus Christi.

Dr. Emily Blackshear directs the Deep Roots: Oklahoma Authors Oral History Project for the Oklahoma State University Library and serves as an interviewer for other oral history projects including the Inductees of the Oklahoma Women’s Hall of Fame and the Spotlighting Oklahoma series. Emily produces and co-hosts the Dear Oklahoma podcast, a collaboration with the Center for Poets and Writers at OSU-Tulsa. She currently serves as editor for the New Territory Magazine’s Food & Philosophy feature. 

Paul Bowers lives with his wife, Denise, in the rural wilds of northwest Oklahoma. He teaches writing and literature at Northern Oklahoma College in Enid, and is the author of a short story collection and two volumes of poetry.

Ashley Brown is a freelance writer and editor. Her first book, Letters to the Daughter I’ll Never Have, was a San Francisco Book Festival Nonfiction Award Runner-Up, a New York Book Festival Nonfiction Award Honorable Mention, and Foreword INDIES Book Award Finalist. Her writing has been published by the Huffington Post and Women Writers, Women’s Books. She’s written for a local magazine, The Hill County View, for over three years. She’s the content coordinator (writer/editor) for Wimberley Living as well. Both publications tell the stories of interesting people and goings-on in the area where she lives. Ashley is also a member of the Editorial Freelancers Association and does freelance work for Penguin Random House, Mezcalita Press,and personal clients.

Joey Brown writes poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in several literary journals including Concho River Review, Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, Quiddity, storySouth, and San Pedro River Review. She is the author of two poetry collections: Oklahomaography (Mongrel Empire Press), and The Feral Love Poems (Hungry Buzzard Press). Joey lives in Missouri with her husband, prose writer Michael Howarth, and their rescue dogs in their somewhat renovated house.

Nathan Brown is an author, songwriter, and award-winning poet living in Wimberley, Texas. He holds a PhD in English and Journalism from the University of Oklahoma where he taught for seventeen years. He served as Poet Laureate for the State of Oklahoma in 2013/14, and now travels fulltime performing readings, concerts, workshops and speaking on creativity, poetry, and songwriting. Nathan has published roughly twenty-one books. Most recent are Just Another Honeymoon in France, 100 Years, and An Honest Day’s Confession. Karma Crisis: New and Selected Poems, was a finalist for the Paterson Poetry Prize and the Oklahoma Book Award. His earlier book, Two Tables Over, won the 2009 Oklahoma Book Award. He’s taught memoir, poetry, songwriting, and performance workshops from Tuscany and Ireland to the Sisters Folk Festival in Oregon, the Taos Poetry Festival, the Woody Guthrie Festival, Laity Lodge, the Everwood Farmstead Foundation in Wisconsin, and Blue Rock Artist Ranch near Austin, Texas.

Leah Chaffins is a short story writer, a novelist, and a poet. Her primary writings are horror fiction, memoir, poetry, and journalism. Her work can be found in publications such as the anthologies Ain’t Gonna Be Treated This Way: Poems of Protest & Resistance, and Behind the Yellow Wallpaper, Red Earth Review, and 580 Monthly. Leah recently published her first novel, “The God Seed”, and is currently working on her second novel, “Birthmarks” and a chapbook “Deep Prairie Bitters”. She is an Assistant Professor at Cameron University and writes a monthly column Lawton Then and Now for 580 Monthly. In her free time, Leah volunteers with organizations that are using creative writing to positively impact the world we share. Her current volunteer work consists of being a submission judge for Ageless Authors and hosting the Community of Writing Workshops Series in Lawton, Oklahoma.

Julie Chappell is an ecstatically retired Professor of early British literature and creative writing. She has read her creative works widely, including in venues in California, New Mexico, Kansas, Texas, and Oklahoma. Her poetry has appeared in several anthologies and journals, such as Elegant Rage: A Poetic Tribute to Woody Guthrie; The Call of the Chupacabra; Malpaïs Review; Voices de la Luna; Dragon Poet Review; Red River Review; Concho River Review; Stone Renga; and Speak Your Mind: Woody Guthrie Poets Celebrate Freedom of Speech 2019, Poems of Protest & Resistance. Her poetry was included in two podcasts in 2019—Ken Hada’s "Sunday Poems" and Jonas Zdanys’ "Open Windows" —for which she is profoundly humbled and grateful. Her two original poetry collections are Faultlines: One Woman’s Shifting Boundaries (Village Books Press, 2013) and Mad Habits of a Life (Lamar University Literary Press, 2019). Two more collections of poetry and a memoir are in progress. She resides in the woods of Lake Keystone in Oklahoma with her poet husband, Hank Jones, and their five cats, umpteen squirrels, raccoons, road runners, and wild birds.

Robert L. Dean, Jr. is the author of At the Lake with Heisenberg (Spartan Press, 2018). His next book, The Aerialist will not be Performing, ekphrastic poems and flash fictions to the art of Steven Schroeder, will be out in 2020. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Flint Hills Review, I-70 Review, Chiron Review, The Ekphrastic Review, Shot Glass, Illya’s Honey, Red River Review, KYSO Flash, MacQueen’s Quinterly, River City Poetry, Heartland! Poetry of Love, Resistance & Solidarity, and the Wichita Broadside Project. He is a multiple Best of the Net nominee and a Pushcart nominee for 2019. In 2018 he was a quarter-finalist in the Nimrod Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. He is event coordinator for Epistrophy: An Afternoon of Poetry and Improvised Music, held annually in Wichita, Kansas. A native Kansan, he has been a professional musician and worked at The Dallas Morning News. He lives in a one-hundred-year-old stone building in Augusta, Kansas, along with a universe of several hundred books, CDs, LPs, two electric basses and a couple dozen hats. In his spare time, he practices the time-honored art of hermitry.

Michael Dooley, aka Woodstok Farley, is an assistant professor at Tarleton State University—Stephenville, Texas. Having migrated from south Florida to Texas, Michael remains more comfortable in sandals than boots. His fiction reflects a deep yearning to return to the seacoast. Michael’s short story, “As the Wave Rose,” was published in the online literary journal Cybersoleil. This story is part of his new episodic collection entitled The Waves Just Aren’t Big Enough Any More: Tales from a Floridian published by Fine Dog Press. Michael’s latest story from that collection is entitled “An Old, Brown Fedora.”

Maureen DuRant’s cousin in Broken Bow, Oklahoma died at 102, yet her Aunt Mary in Belfast, Northern Ireland lives on and turns 100 in April so Maureen still believes, “Perhaps, there is still time, after all, to be a poet.” To add credibility to her quest, she earned an MFA in Creative Writing with her patient husband’s GI Bill at Queens University in Charlotte. She currently serves as the country’s loudest librarian at Lawton High School and teaches at Cameron University. Her first collection of poetry, Skirmishes on the Okie-Irish Border, is forthcoming from Press 53. Other publications include poetry in Crosstimbers, Red River Review, Westview, and The Great American Wise Ass Poetry Anthology as well as a postcard history of West Point published by Arcadia Press.

A. Kay Emmert grew up in Panama, Oklahoma before earning her BFA in Creative Writing at Stephens College, and her MFA in Creative Writing at Georgia College. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where she teaches composition, business writing, and literature. She’s served as Assistant Director to the Program for Professional Writing, and negotiated the first and successive contracts for the non-tenuretrack faculty union.

Bill Endres received a master’s degree from the University of New Hampshire in Creative Writing, studying poetry with Charles Simic. To support himself, he has worked in Antarctica and taught English in Japan. Bill returned to graduate school and received a Ph.D. in Rhetoric, Composition & Linguistics from Arizona State University. Currently, he teaches at the University of Oklahoma, specializing in medieval manuscripts, visual rhetoric, and the digital humanities. In 2019, ARC Humanities Press published his academic book Digitizing Medieval Manuscripts. Through a twist of fate, Bill taught an Intro to Poetry course in the fall of 2018. To demonstrate to students that the smallest of everyday things is as important to poetry as the grandiose, he began writing poetry again, working with students to understand poetry from the inside (by writing it) and from the outside (by reading and studying it). Bill read at Scissortail in 2019 and has published in journals such as The And Review and Artful Dodge

Alan Gann facilitates writing workshops for under-served youth at Texans Can Academy, and wrote DaVerse Works, Big Thought’s performance poetry curriculum. A multiple Pushcart and Best-of-the-Net nominee, Alan is the author of 2 volumes of poetry: That’s Entertainment: Field Notes on Love, Politics, and Movie Musicals (Lamar University Literary Press 2018), and Adventures of the Clumsy Juggler (Ink Brush Press 2015). His nonexistent spare time is spent outdoors: biking, birding, and trying to capture some of that outdoor experience in photographs.

Lyman Grant is a poet and writer currently living in Harrisonburg, Virginia. He is married and the father of three sons. In addition to two textbooks and four edited books, he has published one chapbook and six volumes of poems. The most recent, Old Men on Tuesday Afternoons (2017) and Found Poems and Weather Reports (2020), are published by Alamo Bay Press. His poems, essays, and reviews have appeared in many journals and anthologies, most recently in Writing Texas, Concho River Review, Soul x Southwest, Endlessly Rocking, Texas Poetry Calendar, We Are Residents Here, Unlocking the Word, and Five Friends Sunday Afternoons. He taught for 40 years at Austin Community College (Texas) and recently retired after serving as Dean of Arts and Humanities and as Interim Dean of Communications.

William Peter Grasso’s novels explore the concept, "change one thing…and watch what happens." Focusing on the WW2 era and beyond, they weave actual people and historical events into a seamless and entertaining narrative with the imagined. His books have spent several years in the Amazon Top 100 for Alternative History and War. A lifelong student of history, Grasso served in the US Army and is retired from the aircraft maintenance industry. These days, he confines his aviation activities to building and flying radio-controlled aircraft.

Michelle Hartman's fourth book, Wanton Disarray (Hungry Buzzard Press) chapbook, First Night (Red Flag Press) were released February 2019.  A second chapbook, Doors was just released by Dancing Girl Press. Michelle is the former editor for the online journal, Red River Review. She holds a BS in Political Science-Pre Law from Texas Wesleyan University and a Certificate in Paralegal Studies from Tarrant County College, which recently named her a Distinguished Alumni.

Ann Howells edited Illya’s Honey in print for fourteen years, followed by four years online. Named a "Distinguished Poet of Dallas" by the city in 2001, she also served as President of Dallas Poets Community for four years and as Treasurer for many more. She serves on a committee which takes poetry into schools -- elementary through college. Her poems appear in many small press and university publications including Spillway, THEMA, and Little Patuxent Review in this country, Magma (England) and Crannog (Ireland) abroad. Her books include: Under a Lone Star which was illustrated by Dallas artist, J. Darrell Kirkley, (Village Books Press, 2016); and Cattlemen & Cadillacs, an anthology of D/FW poets which she edited (Dallas Poets Community Press, 2016), and So Long As We Speak Their Names (Kelsay Press, 2019). In addition, she has four published chapbooks, including Black Crow in Flight (Editor's Choice, Main Street Rag Publishing, 2007) and Softly Beating Wings (winner William D. Barney Contest, Blackbead Books, 2017). Another chapbook, Painting the Pinwheel Sky, containing persona poems, primarily in the voice of Vincent Van Gogh, will be published next year (Assure Press).

Jessica Isaacs is the founder and co-editor of Dragon Poet Review, an online literary journal. Her book, Deep August (Village Books Press), received the 2015 Oklahoma Book Award for Poetry. Her poems appear in various publications, most recently including Speak Your Mind (the 2019 Woody Guthrie Poetry Anthology), Oklahoma Today, and The Ekphrastic Review. She teaches writing and humanities courses at Seminole State College.

Markham Johnson won the Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod and he has two new poems appearing in the next issue of that magazine. His poems have recently been published in Nine Mile, Consequence Magazine, The Ekphrastic Review, Sports Literate, and English Journal. His first book of poetry, Collecting the Light, was published by the University Press of Florida.

Paul Juhasz's poem "Just Missed," was recently accepted for publication by Vox Poetica, the poem "Because I'm a White Man," was published in last July's Woody Guthrie Anthology, Speak Your Mind.

Roxie Faulkner Kirk writes from her hundred-year-old farmhouse which she shares with her husband and an ever-changing number of kids, dogs, cats and bees. A former feature writer for a daily newspaper, she published her first novel, The Red Dirt Hymnbook, in 2019. With her husband, Terry, as the managing partner, she publishes her own work and the work of a few select authors under the feisty little micro-press imprint of Fine Dog Press. Her reading is from her forthcoming novel, Okie Boys.

A born and bred Oklahoman, Heather L. Levy is a graduate of Oklahoma City University's Red Earth MFA program for creative writing where she had the pleasure of mentoring under Edgar award winner and fellow Oklahoman Lou Berney. In the fall of 2019, Muzzleland Press published her short feminist fiction piece, “You Should Smile More,” in a Hammer Film tribute anthology. You can also find her most recent and forthcoming work in numerous journals, including NAILED Magazine, Crab Fat Magazine, Prick of the Spindle, and Dragon Poet Review. She also authored a nonfiction series on human sexuality, including “Welcome to the Dungeon: BDSM in the Bible Belt” for Literati Press. When she’s not caring for two kids and three cats, she’s working on her next novel. 

Amy (Huichun) Liang is a Chinese writer and translator, and she is a Chinese Assistant Teaching Professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia. She is the author of her poetry collection: autumn, presencing, co-author (with Zhanjing) of Chinese Idioms and co-translator (with Steven Schroeder) of Small (poetry by Li Nan), and of other anthologies of poetry translation. Her writing has appeared on a variety of Chinese media. Her translation appears in Voice & amp; Verse Poetry Magazine (Hong Kong), Sichuan Literature, Rhino and some other anthologies of Chinese and English bilingual poetry translation. Her poems, Loneliness and Translator have been in the shortlists respectfully in the Flushing Poetry Festival, 2018 and International Flushing Poetry Festival, 2019. Huichun received the 2016 Purple Chalk Teaching award of the College of Arts and Science in MU. She was an editor and reporter at the China National Radio from1985 to 1988. She received a special award for reporting on the terrible forest fire on Da-Xing-An Mountain in 1987 from the All-China Journalists Association and was the co-winner of the 1987 Annual News Editing prize of the China National Radio.

Melina Maloukis is a native Oklahoman. She has taught secondary English for ten years. Her plays have been recently performed in Lawton, Oklahoma. She is the author of the young adult fiction book Royameheirs: Wind. She will be entering Mount Saint Mary’s Abbey to become a nun in the near future. Her poetry has been described as decadent.

Bill McCloud's book of Vietnam War poetry, The Smell of the Light: Vietnam, 1968-1969 (Balkan Press), reached #1 on the "Oklahoma Best-Sellers" List (The Oklahoman). His poems are taught at the University School of Milwaukee, WI. A three-time Woody Guthrie Poet, his poems have appeared in Oklahoma Today, Oklahoma English Journal, Conclave, eMerge, Dragon Poet Review, and other journals. One of his poems was chosen to be posted inside a Tulsa Transit Metro Bus. He is a faculty member of William Bernhardt’s annual WriterCon, presenting sessions on various aspects of writing and publishing poetry. Among the fans of his poetry are songwriters Graham Nash and Jimmy Webb. He lives in Pryor, OK, and teaches history at Rogers State University.
 
John Graves Morris, Professor of English at Cameron University, is the author of Noise and Stories, which was published by Plain View Press in 2008, and he hopes that a second collection, entitled The County Seat of Wanting So Many Things, will soon find a publisher.  His poems have appeared in The Chariton Review, The Concho River Review, The Red Earth Review, The Red River Review, Jelly Bucket, Volume One, Westview, and other journals.  He lives in Lawton.

Christopher Murphy received his MFA from the University of Arkansas and currently teaches creative writing at Northeastern State University. He also reads for Nimrod International Journal. His work has been published at Gulf Coast (online), This Land, The Jellyfish Review, Necessary Fiction, decomP, and The Tulsa Voice among others. 

George Perreault has worked as a visiting writer throughout the American West.  His poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies in the US, Canada, Ireland, Great Britain, and India, and he has been nominated a number of times for both the Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. Perreault’s poetry has won recognition from such organizations as The Nevada Arts Council, The Washington Poets Association, The International Dancing Poetry Festival, The Helen Steward Poetry Award, The Kay Snow Poetry Award, The Charter Oaks Award, and the initial Golden Fedora Poetry Prize from Noir Nation. He has published four full-length books including, most recently, Bodark Country, a collection of poems in the voices of characters living on the Llano Estacado in West Texas.

Brady Peterson was born in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma in the shadow of the second World War. Brady lives in Belton, Texas where he once built houses and taught rhetoric. His most significant accomplishment, if one can call it that, was to help raise five daughters. He is the author of Glued to the Earth, Between Stations, Dust, From an Upstairs Window, and García Lorca Is Somewhere in Produce.

Jason Poudrier is a 2018 Pat Tillman Scholar. He is a novelist, essayist, poet, and Purple Heart recipient of the Iraq War. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in English Education at the University of Oklahoma. He is an award-winning author of two poetry collections, Red Fields (Mongrel Empire Press, 2012) and the chapbook In the Rubble at Our Feet (Rose Rock Press, 2011). His poems have recently appeared in Blue     Streak and World Literature Today. His fiction was awarded runner-up for Cagibi's 2019 Macaron Prize, and has been listed as a finalist for the New Plains Review Sherman Chaddlesone Flash Fiction contest, semifinalist for American Short Fiction’s American Short(er) Fiction contest, and honorable mention for Proud to Be: Writing by American Warriors, Volume 6.

Randy Prus is a Professor of English and Humanities at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant. He is chair of the Department of English, Humanities and Languages. The department offers a B.A. degree in English with a Writing Emphasis. The program routinely offers courses in Creative Writing, Fiction Writing, Writing & Visual Media, Advanced Composition, and Non-Fiction Writing, as well as occasional electives, such as Playwriting, Classical Rhetoric and Creative Reading. His most recent collection of poetry, On the Cusp of Memory, was illustrated by his son, the artist, Ethan Prus.

Keely Record lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma. She is a member of the Euchee-Muscogee Creek tribes. She holds a BA in English and Spanish from the University of Tulsa and an MFA from the Red Earth Creative Writing MFA program at Oklahoma City University. She serves on the editorial board of Nimrod International Journal. Her poetry has appeared in Atlas Poetica and Bamboo Hut.

Gary Reddin is the editor of 580 Monthly, a 15,000 circulation features magazine in southwest Oklahoma. His writing has garnered awards from the AP, the OPA, and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. He is a graduate of Cameron University where he earned his BA in English. His work has appeared in The Razor, Stoneboat, The Hofstra Windmill, The Oklahoma Review and elsewhere. His most recent chapbook, An Abridged History of American Violence, was published in 2019 through Rose Rock Press.

Charlotte Renk treks trails behind her cabin, noting wildflowers and wildlife to capture ever-elusive, core human values, images, perspectives and truths within folks who inhabit East Texas woods and towns. Retired from teaching at L.S.U. and Trinity Valley College, she writes, guest-lectures and conducts workshops. She’s published four books—These Holy Hungers: Secret Yearnings From an Empty Cup, Solidago: An Altar to Weeds, The Tenderest Petal Hears, and This Great Turtle Heart: The Tao of Turtlism, three which won the Eakin, the Catherine Case Lubbe and the William Barney manuscript awards.

Sally Rhoades, a poet, performer and playwright has been active in the Arts Scene since 1990, reading out poetry, performing improvisational dance in many cities across the U.S and in Canada and has had her plays produced around the Albany area and at the Philadelphia Fringe Festival where she premiered Moon Over Manhattan. She has been involved in The Klein Technique Certification program for the last two years which she has practiced for over fifteen years. As a dancer she splits her time between NYC and Albany. She received her MA in English/ Creative Writing from the University of Albany, 1995 where she studied Theatre and performance. She is active in the Albany Poetry community, where she featured in January. She has been published in: Unlocking The Word, an Anthology of Found Poetry, Misfit magazine, Dragon Poet’s Review, 2, Elegant Rage, a poetic tribute honoring the centennial of Woody Guthrie, The Highwatermark Salo[o]n performance series, Up the River and in Peerglass, an anthology of Hudson Valley peer groups.

Rob Roensch has published a collection of stories titled The Wildflowers of Baltimore and a short novel titled The World and The Zoo. He lives in Oklahoma City and teaches at Oklahoma City University. 

Sandra Soli is a writer and editor based in Edmond, Oklahoma. Former teaching artist, she traveled Oklahoma and the southwest for a decade following completion of an honors master’s degree at the University of Central Oklahoma. She taught poetry and creative writing there and elsewhere. Sandy presented at the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference and frequently at the Woody Guthrie and Scissortail festivals. Sandra served as a director of the Oklahoma Center for the Book and on the board of area arts organizations. She has published poetry, articles, and short fiction since the 1970’s and supports projects benefiting food pantries and shelters for homeless persons. Publications include The New York Quarterly, Southern Poetry Review, Ruminate, Rosebud, Red Earth Review, Walt’s Corner in The Long Island Review, and humanities journals of Oklahoma, University of Arizona, and U. S. Air Force Academy. The journal Burnt Bridge featured her work in a commemorative issue for D-Day’s 50^th anniversary. Fiction most recently appeared in The Tulsa Voice. Honors include New Delta Review’s Eyster Prize in Poetry, an Oklahoma Book Award for her second chapbook of poems, and nominations for AWP’s Intro Award, the Pushcart Prize, and finalist for the Guy Owen Poetry Prize, among others and a three-time finalist for the position of Oklahoma’s poet laureate, Sandy was born in England during World War II and was an immigrant to Oklahoma. Her writing often explores war and the outsider experience.

Don Stinson has been writing poems, short stories, and one-act plays for over three decades, with work appearing in Slant, Concho River Review, Riverrun, Westview, Southwestern American Literature, and other print and online journals.  He has been a featured poet throughout Oklahoma and has done readings in Texas, Illinois, Minnesota, and Washington as well as participating in collaborations with musicians and visual artists.  Flatline Horizon was published by Mongrel Empire Press in 2018, and he is currently working on his next collection, Hunger, which will be published by Turning Plow Press sometime in 2020 or 2021.  A graduate of Northeastern State University and Oklahoma State University, Stinson teaches writing and literature at Northern Oklahoma College in Tonkawa and helps organize the annual Chikaskia Literary Festival each fall.

Larry D. Thomas, a member of the Texas Institute of Letters, was privileged to serve as the 2008 Texas Poet Laureate. He has published several award-winning and critically acclaimed collections of poetry, most recently Boiling It Down: The Electronic Poetry Chapbooks of Larry D. Thomas and In a Field of Cotton: Mississippi River Delta Poems, both of which were published by Blue Horse Press in 2019.  A critical essay regarding Thomas's Delta poetry titled, "Despair and Hope through Delta Labor in the Poetry of Larry D. Thomas," by J. Todd Hawkins, appeared in the Arkansas Review: A Journal of Delta Studies, Volume 50, Issue 1.

Denise Tolan's work has been included in places such as The Best Small Fictions 2018, The Best Short Stories from The Saturday Evening Post, Hobart, and Lunch Ticket. Denise was a finalist for both the 2019 and 2018 International Literary Awards: Penelope Niven Prize in Nonfiction and a finalist in 2018 and 2019 for the Diane Wood’s Memorial Award for Nonfiction. Her work was also longlisted for Wigleaf’s Top 50 and nominated for inclusion in Best Small Fictions 2020.

Rebecca Hatcher Travis, an enrolled citizen of the Chickasaw Nation, often writes of her indigenous heritage and the beauty of the natural world. Her book manuscript, Picked Apart the Bones, won the First Book Award from the Native Writers’ Circle of the Americas and was published by the Chickasaw Press. Her second book of poetry, Constant Fires, was published by the Chickasaw Press in 2017 and was an Oklahoma Book Award finalist and won a gold award from Independent Book Publishers Association. Her work has appeared in anthologies, literary journals and online. Ms. Travis is a member of Wordcraft Circle of Native Writers and Storytellers and the Chickasaw Historical Society. She lives in south central Oklahoma, near the land her ancestors settled in early Indian Territory days. She has presented at numerous Oklahoma venues such as the Chickasaw Cultural Center and the Oklahoma Book Festival.

Loretta Diane Walker, an award winning poet, a musician who plays her tenor saxophone sometimes, a daughter navigating a new world, a teacher who still likes her students, a two-time breast cancer survivor, and an artist who has been humbled and inspired by a collection of remarkable people and poets, is a multiple Pushcart Nominee, and Best of the Net Nominee, won the 2016 Phyllis Wheatley Book Award for Poetry, for her collection, In This House (Bluelight Press). Her work has appeared in various literary journals and anthologies in the US, UK, Canada, and India. She has published five collections of poetry. Her most recent collection, Ode to My Mother’s Voice, is published by Lamar University Literary Press. Her manuscript Word Ghetto won the 2011 Bluelight Press Book Award. Loretta received a BME from Texas Tech University and earned a MA from The University of Texas of the Permian Basin. She teaches elementary music at Reagan Magnet School, Odessa, Texas. Naomi Shihab Nye states, “Loretta Diane Walker writes with compassionate wisdom and insight—her poems restore humanity.”

Ron Wallace is an Oklahoma native and currently an adjunct instructor of English at Southeastern Oklahoma State University in Durant, Oklahoma. He is the author of nine books of poetry, five of which have been finalists in the Oklahoma Book Awards. Renegade and Other Poems was the 2018 winner of the Oklahoma Book Award, and his latest work, The Last Blue Sky, was a finalist in the 2019 Oklahoma Book Awards. Wallace has been a “Pushcart Prize” nominee and has recently been published in Oklahoma Today, San Pedro River Review, Concho River Review, Red Earth Review, Windward Review, Oklahoma Humanities Magazine, Borderlands, and a number of other magazines and journals.

Ann Weisman has published two chapbooks and one book of poetry. As a young poet, she had the privilege of studying with Galway Kinnell, William Stafford, Richard Hugo, and Madeline DeFreese. Ann has an MFA from the University of Montana. Early on, she served as a Poet in Residence for the state arts councils of Montana, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. She was also a Poet in the Community for the Tulsa Arts & Humanities Council. Recently, she has shown her poetry-photography pieces at Liggett Studio in Tulsa in the 2018 Tulsa Erotica Exhibit, the 2019 "Curiosities" exhibit curated by Mery McNett, and the 2020 "DoubleSpeak: Artists Respond to this Administration." In February 2020, Ann curated "We Are All Related," a visual art and writing exhibit and reading at Liggett Studio. Ann was awarded first place in the professional category for the 2019 Rural Oklahoma Museum of Poetry Water Poem Contest.

Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue is a retired high school teacher, essayist, short story writer, and poet living in obscurity in beautiful Fort Worth, Texas. He has published over 100 poems in such venues as The Texas Observer, Red River Review, California Quarterly, Concho River Review, Borderlands, two anthologies of Texas poetry, and any number of other publications. His first poetry book, What I Did Not Tell You, is slated to be published by Hungry Buzzard Press this summer. And, whatever you do, don't ask him about his granddaughters, unless you want to see a lot of cute pictures.

Cullen Whisenhunt is a recent graduate of Oklahoma City University's Red Earth Creative Writing MFA program and an advisor with the Honors Program at Southeastern Oklahoma State University. His poetry has been published in Ninth Letter, Frogpond, The Ekphrastic Review, and Dragon Poet Review, among other journals, and he was the featured poet for the August 2019 issue of Red River Review. 

Clarence Wolfshohl is professor emeritus at William Woods University. He has been active in the small press as writer and publisher for fifty years, publishing poetry and non-fiction in many journals, both print and online, including Red River Review, San Pedro River Review, Agave, Cape Rock, and New Letters. Among his recent publications are the e-chapbook Scattering Ashes (Virtual Artists Collective, 2016), the chapbook Holy Toledo (El Grito del Lobo Press, 2017), Queries and Wonderments (El Grito del Lobo Press, 2017), and Armadillos & Groundhogs in late 2019. Wolfshohl lives in the suburbs of Toledo, Missouri, with his dog and cat.